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About Me

Since the 1990s I have been very involved with fighting the military "don't ask don't tell" policy for gays in the military, and with First Amendment issues. Best contact is 571-334-6107 (legitimate calls; messages can be left; if not picked up retry; I don't answer when driving) Three other url's: doaskdotell.com, billboushka.com johnwboushka.com Links to my URLs are provided for legitimate content and user navigation purposes only.
My legal name is "John William Boushka" or "John W. Boushka"; my parents gave me the nickname of "Bill" based on my middle name, and this is how I am generally greeted. This is also the name for my book authorship. On the Web, you can find me as both "Bill Boushka" and "John W. Boushka"; this has been the case since the late 1990s. Sometimes I can be located as "John Boushka" without the "W." That's the identity my parents dealt me in 1943!

Thursday, July 25, 2013

I don’t know if a professional football practice is a “stage”
event in the sense of this blog, but it is certainly a form of “legitimate”
theater.

Today, July 25, 2013, the Washington Redskins opened their
formal practice season, with the public allowed to see sessions for “free” at
10 AM and 3:30 PM, at Bon Secours park in Richmond VA. (You follow the signs on Boulevard from Exit
78 o I-95.) I got there about 2:50 PM, parked in a local
landlord’s lot for $5 (cheap given the demand, but this is Richmond, after
all). I had to walk about a quarter
mile, past the CSX railroad tracks (which can have long, slow freight
trains).

The practice seemed to be mostly like military drill and
ceremonies, and then a few play from scrimmage, which evoked cheers from the
10,000 or so people around. No wonder
I-95 was packed.

RG-III was present but I don’t think he “played”. Is RG-III really Clark Kent? Or is Bryce Harper (who won the Nats game
today with a ninth inning home about the time I was watching the practice) the
real “S”.

Oh, I know of a teen who can
move from one place to another instantly, just like Clark. I think there really are benevolent aliens
among us. I will accept nothing less.) I also think Hollywood should stage a charity
home-run hitting contest (maybe a Dodger stadium) for Tinseltown’s fittest
actors. They probably would do pretty
well.

I do have to throw a little cold water on the festivities,
and remind us that Malcolm Gladwell wants to ed college football, and therefore
the pros (Issue blog, July 21).

Update: Media has reported that RG-III has indeed played in scrimmage and completed some passes.

The media also reported on a viral video of a girl sobbing because she was refused an autograph. It's not mine!

Saturday, July 20, 2013

Saturday morning, CNN interviewed gay songwriter Steve
Grand, 23, who has developed suddenly popularity with his socially explicit “All
American Boy” music video. (He is also know as Steve Chatham and Finn Diesel, and was born in Chicago and would now be 23.)

He first performs with his partner, and then there are a lot
of background players.

Thursday, July 18, 2013

Okay, Josh Groban’s passionate post-romantic song “I
Believe, When I Fall in Love It Will Be Forever” is on YouTube, and embeddable.
It’s from Groban’s own channel.

In fairness to the idea of paying for content, I’ll give a
Target purchase link, too.

The song reaches toward Mahlerian dimensions in its
passionate close, with Wagnerian chromatic excursions at the very end. The key (on my Casio) is E-flat, unusual for
vocal songs. The mood reminds me of some
of Arnold Schoenberg’s Gurre-Lieder (Feb. 22, 2012), which I still think could
find its way into the score of a Star Trek movie.

The melodic line also reminds me of "You'll Never Walk Alone" from the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical "Carousel", a favorite movie musical from Fox during my childhood.

The video appears to be filmed in a large hall with many
background player. I think the hall is
in London, but it also resembles the inside of the National Building Museum in
Washington DC (where SLDN always holds its annual dinners).

This song by Groban tops them all for romantic passion,
following on to “You Raise Me Up”, “The War at Home”, and “Brave”. Curiously, his music doesn't lend itself to "art song" treatment with piano. Groban's music often plays in Sirius-XM's "The Blend".

Friday, July 12, 2013

The New York Times is reporting, in a story by Brooks Barnes
and Patrick Healy on p. B4 (Business) Friday, that 20th Century Fox
is working with Kevin McCollum to bring a number of its popular films to the
stage.

A stage production costs less for the studio to produce,
even though ticket prices are much higher for consumers, usually. And copyright and trademark law in the US and
Europe seems to protect the studio’ business potential for other adaptations of
their films.

Fox could also draw on its inventory of Fox Searchlight film
(maybe like “Little Miss Sunshine”).

Many plays or stage musicals have gone the other route, and
become movies. That’s going to happen
with “Book of Mormon”. It’s happened
with “Rent”, and “Les Miserables”, and I think “Martin Guerre” (I saw it in
Minneapolis at the Guthrie Theater—it’s Boublil and Michel-Schoenberg).

The article mentions “9 to 5” and “Damn Yankees”, and "The Lion King". I’ve seen both films, but not the plays.

Sometimes there are plays about Hollywood personalities,
like “Matt and Ben” (Mindy Kaling and Brena Walters) which I saw a few years
back on an experimental stage in Adams Morgan in Washington.

Hollywood has said (as in statements by Stephen Spielberg),
that it might make many fewer “serious” blockbusters and might invest in
stage-like events (maybe Fathom) that bring much higher ticket prices from
affluent consumers.

Sunday, July 07, 2013

After the communion service at the First Baptist Church of
Washington DC July 7. Organist Lawrence Schreiber played the National Anthem on
the new Austin Organ. I recorded the last "sentence" of the first verse.

I’ve always felt that the “Star Spangled Banner” can use
more adventurous, chromatic harmonies.
For example, in the last line, the word “Free” should be underscored by
a Dominant Seventh instead of the Tonic.

The Smithsonian Museum of American History, visited and
discussed yesterday, has a special exhibit on the Flag as during the War or
1812 and the origin of the National Anthem.

Saturday, July 06, 2013

The Smithsonian Museum of American History is hosting an
exhibit from the National Museum of African American History (site) , to be completed
in 2015. The exhibit is called “Changing
America, The Emancipation Proclamation, 1863 and the March on Washington, 1963.

Other than for the two posters outside the exhibit, there
was no photography allowed in the exihibit, but there is a handout with many
photographs, including a plantation at Beaufort, SC (1862), and a bus in
Madison, WI headed for DC, and Cumberland Landing, VA1962.

There is also a large exhibit recreation of a lunch counter
in Greensboro, NC, from 1960. A
spokeperson led a group singing of “Free At Last” (about 40 seconds) below.

The exhibit includes chards from the explosion in
Birmingham, AL in 1963 The church image
shown was in Black and White taken shortly after the event; Wikipedia has a
modern picture of the 16th Street Baptist Church (attribution,
movies blog, Feb. 6, 2013, review of “March to Justice”).

Friday, July 05, 2013

I was a little late getting to the Capitol West Lawn last
night, having dinner at Ted’s Bulletin on SE 8th St, near the Marine
Barracks, Bryce Harper’s favorite restaurant.
The humidity in town was stifling as I walked the three-fourths mile,
roundabout, to the security entrance, which was not very crowded fortunately.

Fortunately, PBS recorded it all for me.

The program opened with the National Anthem, sung by Jackie
Evancho.

Tim Bergeron was the host, but Barry Manliow dominated, and opened with “I Have Music: I write the songs” and “I can’t smile without you” and beckoned a singalong.

Steven Spielberg introduced the National Symphony playing the trumpet meditation from the films
core of the film “Lincoln”, by John Williams.
The music rather resembles Copland.
I think that selections from Han Zimmer’s score for “Inception” would
have made a great item.

The music as whole was lighter than in some previous
years. No Josh Groban this year (“The
War at Home”, “Brave”, “You Raise Me Up”).
They almost seem too postromantic.

It seems as though you “usually” have to be a really well
established performer to get picked for the Capitol Fourth. Umbrella insurance companies call you “entertainers”. I wonder if a classical composer-pianist is
an “entertainer” for the mass public in that sense.

Manilow came back to sing patriotic songs as the fireworks
started.

Only then did the National Symphony play the closing
passages of Tchaikovsky’s Overture Solenelle, 1812. (They never play the entire overture anymore; they used to.) It seems to me that the finale of the Polish
Symphony would be even more rousing. Oh, but the Russian national anthem (in the movie "Reds") is the most rousing of all.

The fireworks show seemed smaller than previous years. When photographed in the backdrop of the
Washington Monument, some of the blasts make blobs on camera that look like
fireballs for a mushroom cloud. If you
stand on the south side of the law, the trees tend to “eclipse” the
fireworks.

To conclude, Hilty sang some patriotic songs to the Air Force band.

I walked back to Remingtons (1/2 mile, up hill, although the
humidity was now dropping), to see the NYC display finish on NBC, and then to
Eastern Market (the closest station with access to a lot of bars and
restaurants after the celebration), to get a seat on the Orange Line. Unfortunately, Metro anticipated that ruse,
and many of the trains headed toward Smithsonian were “no passengers”.

The ceremony of the year 2000, when I was to leave at 5 AM to go back home to Minneapolis the next day, still rings in my mind. Those were different times.

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